‘Each
spring, a ripple of recollection passes through Beijing and anyone over the age
of 35 remembers how hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens went into the
streets to join striking students.
The crowds,
demanding reforms, used their bodies as barricades against advancing columns of
troops. No on believed the People’s Army
would fire at its namesake.
When the
gunfire started, the crowds melted away in shock and disbelief. Most
individuals became anonymous to history and one another, and, like other
urbanites across China, walled off memories of the massacre and accepted the
Communist Party’s gospel of prosperity: Make money, avoid politics, get on with
your lives.’
I find the
above very well written and I choose not to reinvent the wheel and to use the
same text, with a few changes, to describe the fate of the Red Indians in North
America a few centuries ago. Now try reading this.
‘Each
spring, a ripple of recollection passes through the Plains of the Prairies and
how anyone of any age, could not remember how millions of native Americans,
called Red Indians, went into the prairies to join other native Indians.
The crowds,
demanding for the right to live in their land, used their bodies as barricades
against advancing columns of troops and the Calvary. No on believed the American troops would fire
at its namesake, at native Americans.
When the
gunfire started, the crowds melted away in shock and disbelief. Most
individuals, mothers and children, became anonymous to history and one another,
and, like other urbanites across America, walled off memories of the massacre
and accepted the Confederates and American Union’s gospel of prosperity: Make
money, avoid politics, get on with your lives.’ Unfortunately for the tens of
millions of native Americans aka Red Indians, the genocide was so complete that
barely a few survived today in the land of the free.
While the
bleeding hearts and white man’s conscience want to remember 4th of
June, would the native Indians want to remember 4th of July as their
Independence Day or the Day they were terminated to near extinction? To quote
Frisch, ‘It is a question that global media multinational businesses and
foreign governments must confront as well.’ Or they have forgotten, afraid to
confront to offend the white Americans?
The silence
of the Red Indians is remarkable. There is no tear left for the Red Indians.
Frisch
emphasized that there is one place, Hong Kong, 1,900km south of Beijing, that
allows mass remembrance of Tiananmen. Would there be a place in the North
American continent, a city far away from the Plain of the Prairies, to have a
remembrance of the genocide of the Red Indian as a human race?
Frisch
quoted a Hong Kong journalist Yau Lap-poon saying, ‘Without June 4, would China
have travelled its 27 year path of development? ... Perhaps the blood of
Tiananmen was a kind of fertilizer, helping China bloom prosperously on the
soil of market economics.’
Using the
same phrase, ‘Without the massacre of the Red Indians, would the USA have
travelled its 240 year path of development? … Perhaps the blood of the Plain of
Prairies was a kind of fertilizer, helping the USA bloom prosperously on the
soil of market economics.’
Frisch also
quoted a poem by Cao Shuying, a Beijing poet, ‘I am from a planet you cannot
forget…We survivors look like husks…A burden over years…The laughter of lost
days, emptied out.’
Take a ride
into the prairies in a cold summer night and listen…You may still here the Red
Indian laughter of lost days….many centuries ago. You may still see them
chasing their squaws around campfires surrounded by their wigwams. You may
still see the trails of smokes floating into the air from the pipes of the big
chiefs.
No more
tears for the Red Indians.